SAISD's closed-door meetings raising concerns

By Maria Luisa Cesar :
July 16, 2012
: Updated: July 17, 2012 12:30am

San Antonio Independent School District trustees will meet behind closed doors today and Wednesday for what they called a “self-evaluation” with an Austin-based consultant hired by H-E-B grocery chief Charles Butt.

But Joseph Larsen, a Houston-based attorney who specializes in media law, said the exception to the Open Meetings Act the board is relying on is not meant to cover private meetings with a consultant.

“These are elected officials,” said Larsen, a media lawyer since 1994 who has represented the San Antonio Express-News. “Are they going to be in there criticizing each other out of the earshot of the public? Are there any complaints of how these people are doing their jobs? If they don't like how their board members are doing their job, they need to pipe up and tell the public about it instead of trying to get everyone shoe-horned in a closed session.”

Trustees will meet at the upscale Azuca restaurant at 713 S. Alamo St. at 1 p.m. today and plan to go into closed session under an Open Meetings Act exception that allows for private deliberation regarding “the appointment, evaluation, reassignment duties, discipline or dismissal of a public officer or employee.”

Board members said Butt is picking up the tab. Board president Ed Garza said the meeting will be used for trustee “self-evaluations” guided by the consultant Butt recommended, Tracy Goss. She has met with the board twice before, also on Butt's dime, trustees said.

“It's a time for us to look at ourselves and see how we can get better,” Garza said Monday. “I don't think these board members would be as honest or reflective of their own performance or the performance of a board member” if the meeting was open to the public.

The Express-News plans to challenge the plan to keep the evaluations closed to the public, Managing Editor Jamie Stockwell said.

Rachel Ponce, an SAISD resident and member of a committee charged with overseeing the district's bond spending, said she didn't understand the agenda when she read it.

“How is this a personnel issue?” Ponce asked. “Those trustees serve at the pleasure of the community. Why does this have to be behind closed doors?”

While Butt declined to comment on the cost of Goss' services and other expenses he will pick up, he released a statement that said that H-E-B has used such “facilitators” for years and that Goss “is considered one of the best in the country.”

“Her sole responsibility is to help the group define its objectives and agree on a course of action that leads to the achievement of those objectives.

“As far as the board's responsibility under the open meeting law, I'm not familiar with that legislation but I do know that school boards around the nation meet with facilitators in workshop sessions that are helpful to them.”

Goss was introduced to the board in the fall as tension between trustees and then-Superintendent Robert Durón began to boil over and as the board was divided over the fate of Alamo Stadium. She met with the board again in March.

Larsen, a board member of the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas and recipient of its James Madison Award in 2010, maintains that trustees' evaluations of themselves aren't covered under Open Meetings Act exceptions and that it appears more like “team-building” when led by a consultant.

“A team-building exercise is not the stuff of a closed session,” Larsen said. “This is just wrong on every score.”

The district's lawyer, Pablo Escamilla, said SAISD had long relied on that exception “so that school board members can really discuss and evaluate one another with regards to their performance as trustees.”

Escamilla said the self-evaluations were different from “team-building” exercises, which include discussions about goals and are typically made public. He said it's not uncommon to see school districts use the exception for evaluative, “interpersonal discussion” like the sessions SAISD trustees were having with Goss.

“It's a more personal kind of evaluation in terms of their individual performance with one another,” Escamilla said. “And that's why a facilitator is there.”

But in March, some trustees who met with Goss — also in a closed session and this time at the Marriott Plaza Hotel — described the meeting as “team-building.”

When Garza was mayor of San Antonio, he was investigated in 2005 on a complaint about a possible violation of the Open Meetings Act. No violations were found, though District Attorney Susan Reed said at the time that the steps Garza took were “unusual.”

Karen Freeman, school board president at Northside ISD, said consultants working to help board members evaluate themselves is “a positive thing,” adding, “We have not done that in closed session in Northside, but that doesn't mean it can't be done.”